Mahsûnî is a poet represented by a single syllabic koşma in the Merzifon Cönkü, a manuscript compiled in Merzifon. His name appears only in Metin Hakverdioğlu's article of 2019 introducing the cönk; no other record has been found of his life, his home or his period. Hakverdioğlu offers no comment on this poet. This page sets out what is and is not known about him on the basis of the single record in the cönk.

His Place in the Merzifon Cönkü

The Merzifon Cönkü is a poetry notebook which Metin Hakverdioğlu acquired from a bookseller as coming from Merzifon and keeps in his own library; neither its compiler nor its date is written in it. Hakverdioğlu considers it about a hundred years old; it contains 161 poems by 32 poets, with folk and divan poetry represented in almost equal measure. The poet with the most poems is Tokatlı Nûrî. Hakverdioğlu believes the notebook was put together in the literary circle of Eyüp Sabrî of Merzifon, probably by a local poet using the pen name Fethî. His article publishes only the first stanza or couplet of each poem in the cönk; the full texts remain unpublished in the cönk.

The poet listed in the article as "Mahsunî 1 syllabic" has his koşma on page 97 of the cönk, and in the section on the poems it is given under the heading "poems written by Mahsûnî in syllabic metre (1)", after Fethî's koşmas. The only trace linking Mahsûnî to Amasya is the presence of his koşma in this notebook compiled in Merzifon. Hakverdioğlu describes in some detail how Merzifon was a halting place on the roads to Çorum, Kastamonu, Sinop and Samsun, how folk poets passed through it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how names such as Dertli, Emrah, Nûrî and Âşık Ömer joined the town's gatherings at the invitation of local poets. Whether Mahsûnî was one of these travellers or one of the town's own poets is not known.

His Poetry

Mahsûnî's only poem in the cönk is an eleven-syllable koşma beginning "Göreli çeşmiňi ey ḳaşı kemân". The article gives only its first quatrain; the whole koşma is in the cönk, on page 97. In the quatrain the lover says that he has likened the bow-browed beloved's face to a rose, then accuses her of having no faith and complains that she has made him a laughing-stock before strangers. The refrain "sevdiğim" (my beloved) and the rhyme of "kemân" and "îmân" give the koşma the familiar sound pattern of folk poetry. The quatrain is given on a separate poem page in the poet's category with its original text, a modern rendering and commentary.

The State of the Sources and Discussion

There is no information about Mahsûnî beyond the single quatrain in the cönk. Even the reading of the name is open to question: the article writes "Mahsunî" in the list of poets and "Mahsûnî" in the heading of the poem. The pen name widely used in Ottoman poetry, meaning "sorrowful", is "Mahzûnî"; since in Arabic script the two names differ by a single letter, it is possible that the name in the cönk is in fact Mahzûnî. This possibility is our own observation and cannot be verified without seeing the cönk itself. Given that the cönk is about a hundred years old, the poet clearly has nothing to do with the twentieth-century minstrels who used the pen name Mahzunî and whose poems have been published separately.

Bibliography

Online sources